


Meet Me in the Woods Tonight

by MoanDiary



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Dan KNOWS...something, Gen, Lucifer is a snacc (literally), Reveal, VampChloe rides again, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoanDiary/pseuds/MoanDiary
Summary: The thing in the car wearing the blood-smeared face of his ex-wife bares its fangs at him, blue eyes catching the shifting beams of the headlights and glowing like those of a nocturnal predator. As Dan beholds the sluggishly bleeding puncture wounds on Lucifer’s pale neck, the thing that was his ex-wifehisses.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 31
Kudos: 157





	Meet Me in the Woods Tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Won't Believe in Death 'Til I Die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20924621) by [MoanDiary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoanDiary/pseuds/MoanDiary). 



Dan whistles as he strolls through the half-empty precinct parking structure, a spring in his step. It’s eleven PM on a Thursday, and despite the hour he’s in an uncommonly good mood. He’s racked up a decent amount of overtime this month working on the paperwork backlog for a high-profile murder, and tomorrow is payday. It should be enough that he can finally buy that gorgeous 65-inch 4k OLED TV he’s had his eye on for months. Post-Charlotte, and post-reading every self-help book he could get his hands on, his PlayStation 4 has become the focal point of his personal life as he gradually psychs himself up to re-enter the dating pool. It’s nice to be able to step away from the real world and all its painful memories every once in a while.

He’s fantasizing about how great _God of War_ is going to look when he notices Chloe’s cruiser still sitting in her usual spot. Weird, since he knows she’s not inside the precinct. She must have just pulled in, he assumes, back from following up on a lead, and it strikes him that they need to chat about Trixie’s parent-teacher conferences next week. He changes his course, making his way towards her car, guess confirmed when he sees the shadowy silhouette of someone moving within the vehicle. He rounds the driver’s side and bends down to look inside, hand raised to tap on the window, when the headlights of a passing black and white suddenly illuminate the interior of the cruiser.

The first thing he sees is Lucifer, slumped in the passenger seat, his face pale and starkly shadowed in the slowly shifting headlights. His eyelids hang at half mast, his gaze unfocused and stunned, as if he’s just received a blow to the head. At his neck, the dark shape of Chloe’s head moves subtly, sensuous and slow, her blonde ponytail slithering along her back. He can just barely make out the sound of soft moaning through the glass.

_They’re just necking,_ his conscious mind offers. _Ha ha, in the most literal sense of the word, right?_ But the sight fills him with unaccountable unease, a creeping horror and sense of wrongness that he cannot put his finger on.

He must move or make some noise, because Chloe freezes suddenly. She’s _so still, for so long_. Inhumanly still. Then, faster than a blink of an eye, her head whips around and her eyes fix on him. 

And the _thing_ in the car wearing the blood-smeared face of his ex-wife bares its fangs at him, blue eyes catching the shifting beams of the headlights and glowing like those of a nocturnal predator. As Dan beholds the sluggishly bleeding puncture wounds on Lucifer’s pale neck, the thing that was his ex-wife _hisses_.

Dan flees.

* * *

He doesn’t remember the drive home, only vaguely registers slamming the front door of his apartment closed behind him, frantically flipping the deadbolt, and sliding the chain into place with trembling fingers. He turns to press his back against the door, heart still pounding, and regards the gloomy dimensions of his living room. The slanted street light filters through the blinds in the kitchen. The hulking shapes of his sofa and armchair bring to mind the curved forms of crouching predators, and the shadowy corners pulse with menace.

Dan slides his hand blindly to the wall on his right, fumbling for the lightswitch for several breathless heartbeats until he finds it and flips on the lights. His boring, familiar apartment blinks suddenly into existence and he lets out his breath in a relieved gust. He pauses to let his breathing slow for a few moments before striding rapidly throughout the apartment, turning on lights, checking corners, and drawing closed the blinds, one hand resting nervously on his holstered sidearm. Once the whole place is secure, he finally sinks down onto the edge of his couch and puts his head in his hands.

Surely, he must have been seeing things, right? Too many hours spent staring at phone records must have messed with his vision somehow. And it was late, and he still hasn’t been sleeping great, not since Charlotte. And—and—his brain refuses to come up with any more excuses. He’s an expert at denial, and even _he_ can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for what he saw. It was Chloe, and not Chloe. Something terrifying wearing her face, something that a deep, animal part of him knows to fear.

He thinks back to the last time he talked to her. Only this morning. She’d been getting off her night shift, tired-looking and wincing away from the sunlight streaming through the windows of the precinct. He’d chalked it up to a long night, or a particularly tough case, or one of the migraines she used to get when they were married. She’d slipped on her sunglasses and the hat she’d taken to wearing. Weird, how she’d suddenly started to wear a hat so often, he realizes now. He’d assumed it was some kind of new trend. Her wardrobe always was a little idiosyncratic, after all.

She’d also started working nights more. Explained away as making it easier for one of them to always be available for Trixie if need be. It had seemed like a perfectly logical idea at the time. When had that started? Six months ago? Seven? A few weeks after Lucifer left, he decides. She was so messed up then, he would have agreed to anything to make her life easier. He saw his own grief after Charlotte’s death reflected in her. 

She wouldn’t say where her dick of a partner had run off to, but at the time she must have believed it was permanent, the way she mourned him. He thought that grief had changed her, like it changed him. Although maybe he was only projecting. Maybe what he’d seen in her—the odd affectations, the desk swap, the sudden frequency of injuring suspects during arrest—hadn’t been grief at all.

Because when Lucifer came back...she didn’t change back, did she? Despite how clearly happy she was. She kept up the nocturnal habits, the weird wardrobe choices, the _parasol_. And the looks she gave Lucifer sometime, they weren’t just affection or lust, they were _hunger_ , primal and dangerous. 

Maybe his ex-wife—the Chloe he knew—was gone for good. And something other, something terrifying, was there in her place. Doing her work, living in her home, _raising their daughter._

_Vampire,_ his mind whispers.

He fumbles open the lid of his personal laptop—more commonly used for answering work emails when he’s off the clock, pizza ordering, and pornography consumption—and begins his research.

* * *

Several boxes of takeout Thai food and just as many rounds of vigorous sex later, Lucifer and Chloe are still arguing.

“It would have been the simplest thing in the world for you to say ‘Oh, good evening, Daniel! Fancy seeing you here at this hour! I know I appear to be drinking my extraordinarily handsome boyfriend’s lifeblood, but let me assure you, I’m of no danger to you or our offspring!’”

“Yeah, that sounds exactly like me.” Chloe rolls her eyes. 

“A year ago, you might not have considered hissing like a starving wildcat in heat to be ‘like you,’ either,” Lucifer counters with a sly look.

She huffs but doesn’t dispute the point. “You saw him first, anyway! Maybe if you’d warned me, I could have handled it a little better!”

“I’d like to see your reaction time while immediately post-orgasm and multiple pints short of a full tank! I wasn’t exactly in a headspace for an abrupt Douching.”

She rests her chin on her arms, folded where she lies draped across his chest, and grins, running her tongue over inhumanly sharp canines. “What were you in the headspace for?”

He mirrors her grin and leans up to kiss her, leisurely. “For my sexy, fearsome, brilliant—” He peppers a few more kisses down her neck. “—Starving wildcat in heat of a girlfriend to take me home and have her feral way with me.”

* * *

Some time later, as the dimming evening daylight filters through the thick fabric of Lucifer’s blackout drapes, Chloe manages to rouse herself and wriggle out from under his slack arm to retrieve her phone from the nightstand. She peers blearily at the screen until the numbers come into focus. 5:45 PM.

“Hafta pick up Trixie from dance practice,” she mumbles at Lucifer’s questioning grunt.

He grumbles and resettles as Chloe slides out of bed and pads into the bathroom to shower, puzzling through The Dan Problem as she stands beneath the hot spray. She’d been wanting to tell him for a while now. As confident that she was that she could continue to be just as good a mother and a detective in her current form, it felt unfair of her to conceal such fundamental information from her ex-husband. But it wasn’t the same as admitting something commonplace—like she was a recovering alcoholic or had a gambling problem or a secret second family in Van Nuys. To come out as a vampire to him also meant having to convince him of every other troubling supernatural reality that had now become commonplace for her. It makes her understand how Lucifer felt before she found out about him a little better. Torn between a desire for honesty and openness and the very high likelihood that the truth would send her loved ones running for the hills.

But now the cat was out of the bag, in maybe the most disastrous way possible. She can admit now, with her belly full and Lucifer out of her immediate proximity, that she might have let her monstrous side get the better of her. The image of Dan’s face in a rictus of terror is burned into her memory. She’s moved past him in many ways, but a part of her will always love him, love what he was to her when she was an uncertain rookie, love the parts of him that helped make and raise their daughter. He deserves so much better than to go through this painful and frightening experience alone because of her.

Chloe leaves the shower resolved to go to Dan’s place after dropping Trixie off with her mom and work things out, whatever it takes. She opens her mouth to announce as much to Lucifer as she marches back into the bedroom, but immediately he spins and shushes her silently, a gleeful expression on his face and his phone pressed to his ear.

“Yes, Daniel, I see,” he says solemnly. He pauses while Dan talks on the other end of the line, giving Chloe an exaggerated wink. “Yes, I believe I can find a way to get free from her. Eight o’clock? Yes, that works for me. And what was it you said I should find? A crucifix, eh? Well, I’m sure I have one lying around here somewhere. My relationship with my father aside, ol’ J.C. was a nice enough chap. I’m sure there’s a crown or altarpiece or something in my collection that I can pry one off of. Alright, I’ll see you soon, Daniel. Ta-ta for now.”

Chloe blinks in astonishment. “What... _was_ that? What did you just do?”

Lucifer grins at her. “Well, your ex-husband called to attempt to convince me to emancipate myself from our ‘toxic relationship.’ I, of course, told him I hadn’t the slightest interest in doing so, and he instead decided he wanted to meet with me. Presumably to help free me from your…” He stands up on his knees on the edge of the bed and peels away the towel she has wrapped around her chest. “...Insidious ‘vampiric thrall’ or whatever nonsense.”

He bends to kiss her breasts, but she catches his face between her hands, drawing him back up to look at her. “You’re going to meet with him?”

“Of course! I’ll give him a good talking-to, set him straight, and problem solved!” 

Chloe taps his cheekbone anxiously. For some reason, she highly doubts this is the kind of problem Lucifer will be able to resolve. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to at least have Lucifer test the waters before she attempts to approach Dan herself.

“Okay, but don’t, you know, overwhelm him. Like, no devil face for now?”

Lucifer pouts. “Detective! I—”

She gives him a warning look.

“Fine,” he sighs.

“Call me after, okay? If he seems, you know, not too freaked out, I want to talk with him after I drop Trixie off.”

He hums agreeably when she finally releases him and presses an open-mouthed kiss full of promise on her collarbone. With some reluctance, she manages to step away from him and dress.

Chloe drives to Trixie’s dance class with no small amount of trepidation, her mind providing her with endless worst-case scenarios for how Lucifer could drive her ex-husband much, _much_ further away. A couple too-convincing words about the existence of God, the Devil, and demons might push him over the edge. He might flee the country, like she did. Maybe he’d sue her for custody of Trixie. Maybe he’d—

She’s parked in the dance studio parking lot, car still idling. She barely remembers arriving. At the door, parents and children in varying degrees of dance costume trickle out slowly. Chloe angles her hat against the setting sun and hunches into the collar of her coat, looking at the flawless tans and low-cut shirts of the other parents with no small amount of envy. Inside, a few remaining girls are plie-ing listlessly while the instructor packs up her boom box. Chloe doesn’t see Trixie among them, though.

“Excuse me,” she sidesteps a sunbeam reflecting off of one of the wall-length mirrors and approaches the instructor. Keighlynne is a college student, teeth and hair equally bleached, clearly doing this for some summer cash, and not the brightest bulb in the Radio Shack. “Where’s Trixie?”

“Oh!” The woman blinks her big brown eyes slowly. “I assumed Mr. Espinoza told you—he came to pick her up in the middle of the class. Said it was a family emergency. Poor guy looked pretty wrecked. Death of a grandparent?” She asks with a simper. “My gam-gam left us last summer and I was soooo messed up about it for, like, a couple of days.”

Chloe clutches her phone impotently, biting her lip. She can’t call Dan to ask him where he took their daughter, but she’s desperate to know that Trixie’s alright and not too freaked out. That he didn’t tell her anything. But there are only so many places he could drop her off...

She leaves the studio and gets back in her car, peeling out of the parking lot to the next logical destination.

* * *

“Hello, honey!” Penelope Decker gushes as she opens the door to the beach bungalow where Chloe once lived, leaning in for her customary kiss on each cheek.

“Hi, Mom. Is Trixie here?”

“Yes! I didn’t realize it was Dan’s turn to drop her off, but he was here about a half hour ago. Poor man. Did he have another big break-up? He was in quite a state, _really_ worked up.” Penelope’s B-movie career and exposure to Hollywood’s strangest stars made her about as unflappable in the face of eccentricity as they come, and the fact that she seems concerned about Dan seems ominous.

“Not a break-up, but I think he might be—” She pauses as the smell inside of her mother’s house wafts out. It fairly _reeks_ of something familiar. Her mother _never_ cooks, but—

“Hi, Mom!” Trixie chirps, stepping into view from behind her grandmother. Chloe gawks. She’s wearing a huge necklace composed entirely of heads of garlic, looped multiple times around her neck, with the largest loop reaching down to her waist. 

“Well, you can see what I mean,” Penelope laughs, gesturing towards Trixie.

“Dad put this on you, monkey?” Chloe asks, torn between concern and hysterical laughter.

“Yeah. He says it’s for protection. I think he thinks it’ll keep you away ‘cause you’re a vampire.”

Penelope titters, eyes darting between Chloe and Trixie, trying to figure out the joke.

“My Halloween costume,” Chloe explains hastily.

“Oh, Halloween! You know, I have so many wardrobe pieces from my role as The Vampire Queen in storage. I’m sure you’re just a quick juice cleanse away from being able to fit into them—”

Chloe grits her teeth. “I have my own costume, Mom. Would you mind giving me a minute to talk to Trixie?”

Penelope raises her hands defensively. “Fine, fine!” She turns and strolls away into the house.

“Come here, monkey.” Chloe unloops the garlic necklace from her daughter’s neck and stuffs as much of it as she can fit into her purse.

“Mom, is Dad...okay?” Trixie asks, face taking on a solemn, mature aspect that has only recently begun to make an appearance.

“He’s going through some things right now,” Chloe replies. “But Lucifer and I are going to do our best to help him work them out.”

* * *

The Church of Saint Mark, just a stone’s throw from Chloe’s apartment in Venice, isn’t the finest specimen of its kind by a long shot, Lucifer notes as he strolls down the central aisle. It still suffers from the indelible injuries of 1970s interior design aesthetics—heavy on the brown wood tones and low on ornamentation. The wooden crucifix behind the wooden altar hangs on a grooved wooden wall the exact same color as the cross, making Jesus’ gruesome, white-painted likeness seem to hang suspended in the ether. He is flanked on either side by appalling mustard-yellow drapery that Lucifer finds a greater insult to the poor fellow’s memory than the misguided restoration of _Ecce Homo_.

A few elderly women dot the pews, heads bowed in prayer. He almost misses Dan at first, but then notices the hands white-knuckle clasped around each other atop the back of the front pew, connected to hunched shoulders and a head hanging low between them.

“Evening, Daniel,” he remarks cheerfully as he draws even with the man. Dan’s head comes up with a start, and Lucifer barks a laugh as he takes in the detective’s outfit. Around his neck is a gaudy gold cross that’s more “cheap knock-off bling” than “holy symbol.” Lashed to its gold-plated chain are several heads of garlic. As he stands, Lucifer realizes that several hastily-carved wooden stakes made from what appear to be chair legs are thrust into his belt. Dan draws his jacket tighter self-consciously.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he mutters.

“My utter pleasure, Dan Helsing!”

One of the old women shushes them, and Lucifer quickly turns to give her an apologetic smile. She blinks under the force of his charm, blushing, and then smiles back before returning to her prayers.

“Let’s talk somewhere private.” Dan takes him by the elbow and ushers him into a small storage room behind the apse. He flicks the light on, revealing a clutter of seasonal decorations, candles, and a garment rack bearing a choir’s worth of truly hideous orange robes.

“Ooh, I’ve had a lot of sex in rooms like this over the yea—”

Before Lucifer can finish his quip, he gets a face-full of water. He blinks in shock, wiping his eyes to find Dan holding an empty glass bottle and looking at him expectantly.

“Not my favorite way to get my face wet,” he says.

“I had to check.”

“Check what?”

“That she hadn’t turned you, too.” Dan gestures at the bottle. “Holy water,” he says sagely.

“You’d have to do much better than this to deter her, I’m afraid,” Lucifer says, gesturing at water and the church around them. “None of this Christian mumbo-jumbo does anything at all, by the way. Beings of the night like her have been around far longer than two thousand years, and Dad doesn’t waste His time imbuing crosses and vessels of water with supernatural properties.” Lucifer flaps his hand at Dan’s outfit. “If any of this worked, then it’d probably be effective against the Devil as well, don’t you think? And based on the amount of shawarma that woman can put away, I have extreme doubts about the efficacy of garlic as a repellent.”

Dan blinks at him as he talks with the same nonplussed exasperation he always wears when Lucifer talks about celestial matters. _Why do they never take me seriously?_ Lucifer wonders. He sighs.

“Regardless, you’ve no need to drive her away. In fact—”

“Can I say something first?” Dan cuts him off, expression earnest. “Listen, man, I know the two of us haven’t always seen eye to eye. Sometimes I’m not really sure I like you at all. But I like to think we’re close enough that we have each other’s backs, right?”

Lucifer feels a hesitant smile edge across his face, the origins of which he can hardly comprehend. “I’ve considered you more a friend than a douchey annoyance for some time now, Daniel.”

“Then please take this the right way. You may think you’re the Devil, but you’re not. You’re a good guy. But is that why you’re with her?” Dan grimaces. “You think you deserve it?”

“You know what? Yes, I finally do believe I deserve her.” Lucifer beams proudly.

Dan pales, takes him by the shoulders, and shakes him. “You’ve gotta snap out of it, man! She has you under her thrall! It’s a spell or something! Chloe’s a monster! She might not even be Chloe anymore, she’s a—a thing!”

“Unhand me, please, Daniel,” Lucifer says, tone icy.

“No, man, I need to help you, even if you don’t realize it.”

“Unhand me or I will de-hand you,” Lucifer snaps, eyes flaring with hellfire.

Dan stumbles backwards with a gasp, knocking over several candlesticks and a stack of collection plates with a clatter. “Is that…? What _was_ that?”

Lucifer boxes him into the corner, leaning in close. “Listen to me very carefully, Daniel. Chloe Decker is a great woman, detective, mother, and—yes—vampire, but she is _not_ a monster. And she is not a _thing_.”

“B-b-but, she—I saw her _drinking your blood_.”

“Yes, and I thanked her for it! Nothing puts the edge on an orgasm quite like a little bloodplay. And with a celestial metabolism, losing a pint or three of blood a day isn’t really a problem.”

“A c-celestial...what?”

“Celestial, infernal. All part of the package!”

Dan blanches, swallowing heavily. “Your eyes...you...you’re actually the devil?” 

Lucifer raises his eyebrows and smiles tightly.

“I can’t—I have to go—” Dan’s eyes flit to the door behind Lucifer, panicked.

Lucifer sighs. “The Detective is going to be very cross with me, I suppose. No chance you’d be willing to sit down and talk this through calmly? No? Very well.” He steps back, giving Dan a wide berth. The man stays frozen for a long moment, breathing as rapidly as a snared rabbit, before lunging towards the door, flinging it open, and racing back out into the church.

Lucifer winces regretfully and calls Chloe.

* * *

Dan once again slams his front door shut behind him and reconstructs the furniture barricade he made in the early hours of this morning. It had never occurred to him to think that not only were vampires real, but also every insane thing Lucifer had ever spouted off about. He was up against not only a bloodthirsty ex-wife, but now the concept of eternal damnation, too. And Eternal Damnation was _sleeping with_ said ex-wife.

He puts the half-empty pot of coffee he brewed sometime earlier today in the microwave and opens his laptop again, logging in to “The Nightwatcher’s Domain,” the forum where he’d gotten most of his vampire deterrent intel. Despite the kitschy early-aughts web design aesthetics, it was the one place where people seemed to be taking the topic seriously and not just enacting vampire hunter roleplay. He clicks through the different boards, finally landing on one he hadn’t dared post in before: “Hunter Seeking Hunter.”

_DetectiveDan78: Met with potential thrall to stage an intervention but things escalated. Made it back to home base. Anyone know anything about demons/devils? Do they commonly associate with vamps? Threat may be imminent. Looking for help in Los Angeles area._

He sits back, drinking half-warmed coffee and compulsively refreshing the page until a response appears.

_midnite_wolf: am also in L.A. & have dealt with at least one demon. they r not common these days but at least one in the area recently. not sure what u mean by devils??? thats not a thing. my crew is always down to take out some vamps tho._

He replies immediately.

_DetectiveDan78: When can we meet up? I’m afraid for my daughter. The vamp in question may be a threat to her._

_midnite_wolf: its still early, lets get er done. will dm coordinates for good spot in griffith park._

He sees the private message indicator light up and opens it to find a set of GPS coordinates and a time— 1:30 AM. He plugs the coordinates into Google Maps. Almost immediately, his phone rings as well, making him jump in his seat. He stares at it for a long moment, trying to put boundaries on what’s possible in this new and terrifying world he finds himself in. Vampires: real. The Devil: real. Psychics? X-ray vision? Invisibility? Who knows?

He looks at Chloe’s photo on the caller ID. It’s from Trixie’s sixth birthday, back before their breakup. Chloe is tickling Trixie, and their daughter, in turn, is a split second away from squishing a sizable chunk of chocolate cake into her mother’s face. Dan wonders if that woman is truly dead and gone now—replaced by a hollow, evil facsimile, like the other members on the forum insist she is. He imagines her smiling the wide, movie star smile that first drew him to her years ago. Imagines her teeth sharpening and lengthening. Imagines her ripping into Trixie’s neck—

He takes a slow, deep breath and answers the phone.

“Dan?” comes her familiar voice over the phone.

“I’m here.”

“Please don’t hang up. Lucifer says you’re freaking out. And listen, I get it. I understand. I freaked out at first, too. About him, and about me.” She’s quiet for a while, waiting for him to respond. The line is dead aside from the sound of his own breathing.

“Okay,” she says eventually. “Can we...talk in person? On neutral territory somewhere? You can bring your sidearm, or...or stakes, or whatever you need to feel safe.”

He looks at the map on the laptop screen in front of him. “Griffith Park, tonight. One forty-five. I’ll drop a pin for you.”

* * *

Dan arrives at the appointed location at 1:15, a wooded clearing not marked by any discernible hiking trail or sign. It was a bit of a hike off the road where he parked, made perilous by the darkness, but not as bad as it could be under the October moonlight and ambient light from the city of Los Angeles spread out in all its twinkling, light-polluting glory beneath him.

Puffing with exertion, he drops down to sit on a fallen log and scrubs his face with his hands, feeling keenly the nearly 48 straight hours he’s been awake. _What the fuck are you doing?_ He wonders. There’s a chance he might be making the worst mistake of his life. There’s also a chance he might be saving countless lives, though, his daughter’s among them. Who knows when he’ll have another chance, especially now that she knows he’s on to her.

He sits in silence for several minutes, listening to the nighttime sounds of the woods and startling at the calls of strange wildlife, before he hears the shuffle of footsteps in the undergrowth approaching. He stands as a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and a scrubby beard, wearing a beat-up leather jacket ambles into the clearing.

“Midnite_wolf?” Dan asks, feeling silly using a screen name, for not even thinking to do a background check and figure out who the hell the guy even _was_ first.

The man gives him a wide, white-toothed grin. “Detective Dan, I presume? Good on ya for following through. Most don’t. Real shame.”

Dan peers nervously into the shadowy woods behind him. “I thought you said you were bringing a crew?”

“Oh, I am. They like to send me out to scout the area first. Make sure everything’s copacetic, as they say.” Dan is pretty sure he’s never heard someone say that outside of a movie, but he nods vaguely, his sense of unease rising. He rests one hand casually on his holstered service weapon.

“No need for that, Detective Danny!” the man laughs, looking around the clearing curiously, nose tipping up as if trying to catch a scent. “When’s this vamp of yours gonna get here?”

“I told her 1:45.”

The man turns back to face him with a toothy, animal grin, eyes shifting from brown to glowing yellow before his eyes. _“Plenty of time,”_ he growls.

Dan stares in terror as the man’s limbs begin to elongate and sprout thick gray fur. His mouth widens and his teeth grow long and knifelike. His fingernails turn into claws and thick muscles bulge under his clothing. 

As he transforms, he advances, backing Dan toward the steep drop-off overlooking the city. Very close by— _too close_ —a chorus of howls sounds. Dan sees similar shapes moving in the woods, panting and growling and gibbering, illuminated by the pale light of the full moon. When the transformation is finally complete, the beast stands a good seven feet tall, even while hunched to stalk him.

Dan stumbles on a rock and falls, scrambling backwards until he feels the drop-off behind him. The monster seems to laugh as it advances, a deep, hoarse sound. Dan pulls out his gun and fires a handful of wildly-aimed shots. A few seem to wing the beast, but they barely cause him to hesitate. The slavering jaws lean in close, and Dan tenses for one final struggle—maybe to punch it and then make a run for it—when the nearby howls are broken by an animal yelp of pain. Midnite_wolf stops immediately, head coming up and turning in the direction of the noise. Dan propels himself as fast as he can in the other direction, but barely makes it five steps before a clawed paw catches him and pins him to the ground.

He closes his eyes and winces, waiting for death, but the monster seems distracted, still. In the woods around them, there are suddenly more yelps and howls, then growling and the sound of a violent struggle. His face pressed into the dust, Dan tries to peer beyond the clearing to make out what’s happening. All he can see is shadows moving rapidly in the darkness. Smaller shadows and the larger forms of the wolves. Dan’s captor seems equally perplexed, growling lowly and turning his great head this way and that to try to follow the action, flexing the paw that rests on his back, the claws sinking into the leather of his jacket.

Then, suddenly, another werewolf breaks into the clearing, yelping. After it comes a streak of tragically mismatched paisley, athleisure leggings, and blonde hair as Chloe Decker— vampire, detective, and his ex-wife—pounces on the creature, tearing into its fur with bloody fangs, before clasping its head in a vice grip and quickly snapping its neck. 

_She always shows up to appointments early,_ Dan thinks wildly.

Chloe’s on her feet again in a blur of motion as another wolf crashes to the ground as if it’s been dropped from a great height, dead as soon as it hits the ground. There’s a deep rushing of air and Lucifer lands beside the creature, massive white wings folding primly behind him. Chloe and Lucifer exchange a look before advancing in perfect synchrony towards midnight_wolf.

“You all right down there, Daniel?” Lucifer asks calmly. “You seem to have gotten yourself into quite a pickle this time.”

“Get your foot off my ex-husband,” Chloe growls.

“Come on, now,” the creature wheedles in a deep, inhuman voice that nonetheless has the same cadences as it had when coming out of his human form. “Your man here wanted to have us kill you, ma’am. Though of course you know we have no quarrel with the vampire community. Although this slaughter of my pack is a violation of The Accord.”

“First of all, Dan is going through a very difficult and confusing experience, and I recognize that, so I’m not going to fault him for that,” Chloe says.

Lucifer sighs and exaggeratedly rolls his eyes.

“At this time.” She adds, glancing down at Dan pointedly. The disappointed, exasperated look is _so Chloe_ that his heart skips a beat, thinking about what he almost did to her. “And also, I’m not really part of the ‘vampire community,’ and I don’t give a fuck about your stupid Accord. As you might have noticed,” she says, gesturing to Lucifer, who gives a cheerful wave. “I kind of run with a different crowd. Now,” her eyes narrow in a way that’s also acutely familiar. “Take your paw. Off. Of. Him.”

The werewolf sneers and shifts backwards, making to take his foot off of Dan’s back, only to lunge suddenly, faster than the blink of an eye. The tackle takes Chloe down to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

_“You killed my pack, vampire scum!”_ the beast snarls. Chloe hisses and struggles under his weight. Dan climbs to his feet just as Lucifer jumps into the fray, both men pulling at the creature to free her. Dan gets an arm hooked around its neck and fumbles at his waist for his gun, but instead finding only the forgotten stakes thrust into his belt. He pulls one free and stabs the wood into the monster’s back. It howls in pain and whips its head around, snapping at his arm. The distraction is enough for Lucifer to slice cleanly through the creature’s jugular with a familiar curved blade.

It gurgles horribly as it flails in its death throes, great gouts of blood spraying onto Chloe, who grimaces and wiggles out from under its feebly thrashing weight.

Dan falls back inelegantly onto his butt, stunned.

“Was that super necessary?” Chloe asks Lucifer, wiping blood out of her eyes with disgust.

“Felt like the right thing to do at the time,” Lucifer shrugs, wiping his blade clean on the werewolf’s furry arm.

Chloe turns to Dan, her familiar blue-green eyes softening in concern. “You all right?”

She looks him over with a critical eye, hands probing for injuries. She freezes when her gaze reaches his forearm. It’s only when he looks down at it too that he realizes the sleeve of his leather jacket is torn raggedly and blood is pulsing from beneath it. As if on cue, the adrenaline begins to wear off, and he feels the pulse of pain from what is clearly…

...a bite.


End file.
